Curse of the Firstborn: Outtakes
by annie penrose
Summary: These are various Outtakes and alternative scenes from the story Ginny Weasley and the Curse of the Firstborn. Have fun reading.
1. Letting Go

_**A/N:** Draco comes to Ginny's rescue, and has a lot of time to think about what loving her requires of him. An outtake from Chapter 13 of "Ginny Weasley and the Curse of the Firstborn." If you haven't read that first, you probably won't understand this._

**Letting Go**

Draco had been pacing the floor in his bedroom for an hour. He kicked viciously at the fireplace. Love. What the hell did he know about love? He'd never loved another person in his life. He might have come close to it with his mother, but he knew himself well: what he'd mostly felt toward his mother was greed. He'd been attached to her only as far as she had something to give him… Come to think of it, that effectively described any relationship he'd ever had with another woman.

Except Ginny.

Ginny had nothing to offer him: not money; not political connections; not any particular beauty; not status; not experience. And yet when she was in the room with him, he felt himself come alive in a way he never had before. When she was there, Four Winds felt like home: like there was a reason to stay. She challenged the comfortable status quo he had come to live at, not only by the things she said, but simply by being who she was.

And the way she had kissed him on the beach… Draco closed his eyes against a little shock wave of pleasure. But the kiss had been before she knew about Dark of the Moon. There would be no more kisses now.

Frustrated, he went to the wall-mounted potions kit in the bathroom and took out the makings of a Dreamless Sleeping Draught. He needed to stop thinking like this; he needed to sleep, and to forget.

He was mixing it when the green light from the bedroom caught his eye. A Floo call. He dropped the bottle of valerian root into the sink with a clatter, and went to kneel on the hearth rug. As always, the fireplace was empty except for the flames, flickering green, and cool, and clear as glass.

"Headquarters!" he said, and stuck his head into the fire.

When it stopped spinning, he was looking into a shabby kitchen. There was the familiar scarred and scrubbed wooden table, the strange clock with nine hands, and the old, enamelled sink, chipped and stained, but shining clean. There was also Arthur Weasley, crouched near the fireplace, waiting for him.

Without preamble, Arthur began to reel off his report.

"Good. Malfoy. Convenience shop robbery at the corner of Crandall and Lutz, London. Apparition coordinates QE-seven-nine and LL-thirty. Got that?"

Draco committed it to memory. "Got it."

"Good. My sources tell me the fuse box in the shop has been shot up and the place is on fire. Several customers still inside."

"Is everyone there already?"

"No, Kincaid has still to come."

"He'll be right behind me, I expect," said Draco. "See you there."

"Take care, son."

"I always do." Draco pulled his head back into his room at Four Winds, and began pulling off his robes. With nearly contiguous motions born of long practise, he reached for his tatty jeans and a sweatshirt from the clothes cupboard, even as his dress robes were coming over his head. In thirty seconds, he was standing in front of the convenience shop in London.

It was a tiny, dingy place, but a brightly-lit sign in the window advertised, "Open 24 Hours!" Smoke clouded the glass door, and seeped out around the edges. Two or three onlookers hung about the edges of the pavement, talking among themselves in frightened whispers, and from inside the shop, Draco could hear muffled shouts, and an odd, popping sound he recognized as gunfire. Reaching for his wand, he pulled open the shop door and slipped inside.

The smoke stung his throat and made his eyes water. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, clapped it over his nose and mouth, and moved forward, following the sounds of the shouting. He felt his foot strike something soft on the floor, and he nearly stumbled. Crouching down, he found it was a person. He shovelled his arms under the still form and heaved it gracelessly up. Staggering a little under the load, he headed back for the door.

Outside, he sucked in great gulps of fresh air and looked around. David Gordon was off to the right, a middle-aged man sitting at his feet, holding his arm and rocking back and forth. Draco made his way over, and dumped his own burden unceremoniously onto the pavement, next to the man. For the first time, he looked at the person he had rescued. It was a young woman – or at least he _thought_ it was a woman – dressed in baggy clothes and army boots, her hair cropped close to her head, with several piercings in her nose, ears, and eyebrows. She was unconscious.

At that moment, Lowen Kincaid appeared beside him, and Draco turned. There might be more people inside yet. "Ready?" he said to the big man, and Kincaid nodded tersely. Together, they charged back into the shop.

This time, he hadn't gonea dozen steps before he crashed into one of the gunmen. His shoulder caught the man in the back, and the gunman turned with a yelp of surprise. The two went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Dimly, Draco heard the gun fire over his shoulder. Twisting quickly, he rolled on top of the other man, and rammed a fist into his nose. He felt it collapse under his knuckles with a satisfying crunch. The body under him went limp, and Draco stabbed his wand at the man's chest.

_"Stupefy!"_

The man didn't move again: not then, and not when Draco dragged his unresisting body out onto the pavement and dumped it there. He paused for a moment. In the distance, he heard the wail of sirens; they didn't have much time. He plunged back in.

The smoke was thicker now, and the back of the shop was lit by an ominous, orange light. He heard the crackle of flames from somewhere far away; felt the air in the place already heating up. Draco sensed, rather than saw, Arthur Weasley brush by him with another body in his arms.

"There's someone over there!" Arthur called out, giving him a sharp nudge on the shoulder. Draco turned left and groped his way through the smoke. The shop was small, and within moments, his foot kicked the body lying on the floor. Automatically, he bent and pulled it up into his arms. For a second the smoke cleared, and Draco caught a flash of brilliant, ginger hair. His blood froze in his veins.

It was Ginny.

His mind refused, at first, to accept it. How had she gotten here? But here she was, and she was in his arms, frighteningly limp. She coughed just then, and clutched at his shirtfront, and it jolted him into action. Draco stumbled back toward the door, wild, unreasoning panic sweeping through him. Outside, under a street lamp, he saw that the front of her blue jumper was soaked with a dark, wet stain. Blood. Oh Morgana, she'd been shot.

'Ginny!' He didn't know if he had spoken it aloud or not. He lowered her to the pavement, and groped for her hand, tugging at it, willing her to turn and open her eyes, to speak to him. She lay still, and he couldn't tell if she was even breathing.

He took her by the shoulders and shook her roughly. "Ginny!"

She made a little whimpering sound, but that was all.

'Don't die on me,' he thought.

He glanced around himself uneasily. Three Muggle police cars were pulling up to the kerb, their blue lights flashing so blindingly Draco had to shield his eyes against them.

"Time to get out of here," he heard Lowen Kincaid mutter, behind him.

He couldn't just leave Ginny here.

"Here comes Gordon now," Kincaid said.

"Ginny, talk to me!" She lay still, and he shook her again, impotently. Funny that he could rush into a burning building and pull out strangers with a perfectly clear head, but he could not think what to do when it was Ginny who needed help.

David Gordon came toward them. "Let's go. Where's the Commander?"

"Just leaving the sign, I expect," Lowen told him.

Draco felt David crouch beside him, and he seemed to sum up the situation in a glance. "Get this one to St Mungo's," he said tersely.

Draco felt that his feet were fused to the pavement: he could not make them move.

"Take her, Malfoy," Gordon said, his voice urgent. "Get out of here."

Wildly, Draco looked around. There was a red phone box nearby. Like most phone boxes, it probably doubled as an Apparition Port. He hauled Ginny by the neck of her jumper back into his arms, and stood up. He staggered towards the phone box, and pushed open the door with his shoulder. For a brief moment, caution asserted itself, and he fumbled a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. It was the middle of the night, but he couldn't risk being recognised, or remembered. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and close around his face.

"St Mungo's Hospital, Emergency Department!" he cried.

And mercifully, he was there.

The pretty, young mediwitch behind the desk turned toward him expectantly. "Can I help you?"

Draco ignored her. Just beyond her desk was a set of double doors blocking the corridor, and he headed for them, with Ginny in his arms. He burst through them, the mediwitch's cries of protest ringing in his ears, and stopped, looking around himself frantically. He had to get someone to help her.

A Healer in a lime-green robe sailed over. "Can I help you?" he asked in a cool, unperturbed voice.

Draco nodded toward Ginny. "She's hurt. Shot by a Muggle bullet, I think."

The Healer took over at once. With a simple motion of his hand, he was surrounded by mediwitches and a confusing jumble of other staff people. Draco felt Ginny's body lifted from his arms and he watched them carry her to a cot. Someone pulled a curtain around her, and she was hidden from view. He let himself go limp for a moment. She was in good hands.

The Healer turned toward him again. "Now, what happened?"

Draco shook his head. "I don't know anything. I found her on the pavement." He began to back away. It was time to get out before he was caught. He fumbled in his pocket. "Here. When she wakes up, be sure she gets this." He tossed the silver medallion to the Healer, who caught it automatically in the air. As he edged away, Draco saw the Healer examine it, and then look back at him in astonishment. He could almost hear the man's thoughts: 'Quicksilver! I just talked to Quicksilver!' Before the Healer could say another word, Draco fled.

At home, he took ten minutes to shower. He couldn't go back to St Mungo's smelling of smoke, or someone would get suspicious.

His mind was in turmoil. What had Ginny been doing in a seamy Muggle convenience shop in the middle of the bloody night? Had she been running away? Leaving him? The thought caught him like a solid blow to his gut, and he actually had to steady himself against the wall of the shower.

No. No, she wouldn't do that to him. Would she? Was he that miserable to live with, that she had to escape?

'Don't die on me, Ginny,' he thought desperately. He would do better. He would try harder. She couldn't leave. She couldn't die.

He pulled on freshly-pressed robes then took the Floo to St Mungo's, and found the Information Desk again. The pretty mediwitch was there, and she didn't seem to recognize him as the same man who had come in a quarter of an hour before, wearing a tatty Muggle sweatshirt and sunglasses.

"I believe my wife was just brought in with a gunshot wound," Draco told her. "The name's Ginny Weasley."

The girl consulted a parchment chart in front of her. "Oh yes, she was just brought in: they identified her by the name on her Apparition License. She's in room three-sixteen; the Healers are still working on her."

His mouth was dry, and he had to try twice before he could form the words: "Is… is she going to be all right?"

"I really don't know," the mediwitch told him. "But you can go and see for yourself." She pointed down a corridor. Draco followed it, willing himself not to run; ticking off room numbers as he went. Three-oh-eight; three-ten; three-twelve… her room was at the end of the corridor, and when he found it, he burst through the door without knocking.

A Healer was just towelling his hands dry at the sink, and he smiled at Draco.

"Mr Weasley, I presume?"

"No, it's Malfoy. Different last names, but she is my wife."

"Oh, all right then." The Healer stuck out his hand, and Draco shook it gratefully. The man was smiling; that had to be a good sign.

"How is she?"

"Sound as a top. Had a Muggle bullet lodged in her shoulder. It made for a lot of blood, but we got it out, and there's no serious damage. How did it happen?"

"I have no idea," Draco lied, trying to look puzzled. "This is the first I've heard about it."

"Well, she should stay here the night, and if all goes well, she can go home in the morning. She wants a few good days of rest: keep her quiet; wait on her hand and foot. That sort of thing."

"Right."

"Will you be staying here with her, tonight?"

"If it's all right."

"Of course it is. We'll be in and out through the night to check on her. Meanwhile, just call the mediwitch if you need anything."

"There's one more thing," Draco said. "I'd like her to have a private room."

The Healer shrugged. "As good as done. We have a low census on this floor tonight. I'll have a word with Registration, and ask them not to put anyone else in here."

"I appreciate it."

After the Healer had gone, Draco pulled up a chair to Ginny's bedside, and looked long and hard at her face. She was very white, which made her freckles stand out more than ever. She had a smudge of soot on one cheek. He pulled out his handkerchief, and very gently, wiped it away. "Ginny."

She did not move, but the Healer had said she was going to be all right. He sat back and settled in to wait.

Draco had a lot of time to think that night. Every two hours, the mediwitches came and checked on Ginny, brushing their wands over her body, or administering potions through the drip in her arm, but in between, the hours seemed interminable. One of them brought him tea, and although he intended to drink it, it grew cold in the cup before he remembered.

Had Ginny really been trying to leave? The idea made him feel ill. Oddly, it brought back to mind an old Care of Magical Creatures lesson he'd had at Hogwarts, once. They'd been studying Fire Fairies: elusive creatures of great beauty that were said to bestow special powers on their owners. Naturally, everyone in the class wanted to own a Fire Fairy, and once they had caught them, were reluctant to let them go.

That was the key with Fire Fairies, though: they were easy enough to catch, but then you had to set them free again. Otherwise, there was no magic to them. Keeping a Fire Fairy captive against its will was no good: he remembered that clearly, from the lesson. Professor – what was her name? Grubbly-Plank, or something vulgar like that. She'd made them release their Fairies, and said that if one came back to you, it was yours to keep. If not, you were out of luck. And at the end of the day, there was only one girl in the whole class whose Fire Fairy ever came back to her. Some Hufflepuff, whose name Draco had never bothered to learn.

His thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. It opened, and Arthur Weasley came in. Draco stood, and shook the other man's hand.

"How is she?" Arthur whispered, looking down at his daughter.

Draco told him what the Healer had said, and Arthur blew out a relieved breath.

"I haven't said a word to her mother yet: I wanted to wait until I knew something…" He fell silent, and Draco watched the older man carefully brush the hair back from his daughter's face before turning again to him.

"We miss her. How is she, Malfoy? I mean, at Four Winds. Is she happy?" There was the suggestion of a tremor to his voice.

Draco didn't have to think long about the answer. Of course Ginny wasn't happy. She was a Ministry Auror, living against her will with a mafia bloody hit man. How could she be happy? But he couldn't tell Arthur that, because… well, because Arthur looked as though hearing something like that would just about do him in right now. So Draco said, "I think she's doing fine." And he was gratified by the relief that flooded his Commander's face.

Arthur went home soon after, but his words seemed to linger in the air long after he left. "Is she happy?" Draco wanted her to be. He had begun to feel it when they were together on Crete, the idea that Ginny's happiness was important to him. It was more important, even than his own and that was a foreign idea: one that he did not quite know what to do with.

Draco heard the hospital around him begin to wake long before he saw the first, faint rays of dawn filtering through the window in the room. He was beginning to feel stiff and exhausted from his night-long vigil. But Ginny might wake up at any minute now, and he wanted to be there when she did. In an attempt to stay awake, he drank the tea, now stone-cold, that the mediwitch had brought him hours ago. It didn't help; he felt himself drifting away…

He sensed Ginny stirring, and it brought him sharply out of his half-dream. He sat up. Her eyelids fluttered, and then opened. She gazed about herself in confusion, and then her eyes came to rest on him. She smiled weakly, and held out her hand.

Automatically, he took it, and before he could stop himself, he kissed her on the forehead. Her hair smelt of smoke, but she was going to be all right.

"You gave us a right good scare," he told her.

"It scared me too. What happened, exactly?"

"You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The shop was being robbed, apparently, and you got in the way."

She frowned. "What about the fire?"

"One of the idiots shot up the fuse box."

"Was everyone ok?"

"No, the clerk was killed."

"Oh, that's terrible." He watched her turn her head away from him, and he suspected that she might have started to cry.

"Are _you_ all right?" he asked her.

She gave a great sniffle, and swiped at her eyes. "Yes, I'm fine, thanks. How did you know to find me here?"

"The Healers called me," Draco lied. "No idea how they knew. You must have said something to them."

"I don't remember."

"What _do_ you remember?" He watched her carefully.

"Not a lot." She turned to face him again. "I was on my way to see Sarah, and I stopped to pick up some wine. And then there was all this shouting, and I got shot. There was smoke everywhere, and someone picked me up and carried me outside."

Visiting Sarah? Then she had not been leaving. For a moment, his relief was so profound he could not speak. "Who?" he managed, at last.

"I don't know. I suppose it was the fire department, or the MLES, or something. They knew to take me to St Mungo's, anyway, so I imagine it was the MLES."

So she didn't remember. "Probably. What then?"

"I don't know, really. A Healer gave me a potion, and… here I am. Did they tell you what was wrong with my arm?"

"You were shot in the shoulder, and you lost a lot of blood, but there doesn't seem to be much damage. In fact, they said you might go home later today."

"Oh, that's a relief."

And all at once, he knew what would make her happy. He studied her: the slight form under the blankets; the freckles and pallid complexion; the tousled red hair. He could not understand the spell she had woven over him these past weeks and months. So unexpected was it, that he might have blamed it on a Love Potion, except that he knew Ginny would never stoop to something like that. And now, having discovered how much she meant to him, he wanted to clutch at her: to keep her as close to him as he could. To _make_ her feel the same way about him.

But he could, for once in his life, put aside his own feelings, and think about someone else's. He could give her this.

He said it: "I was thinking you might feel better recovering at your mother's house."

"Oh, Draco, could I?" Ginny looked as though she might start to cry again, and he felt a stab of pain through the place where he breathed.

He forced out the next words. "Yes, of course you can. When they're ready to release you, I'll floo your father."

They were interrupted just then by the Healer, a brisk young Asian woman who shooed Draco out of the room, and closed the door behind him.

In the hallway, Draco stared, unseeing, at the beige-coloured wall opposite him. He was numb from exhaustion. From elation, and disappointment, and uncertainty. He had told Ginny he would floo her father; there was no going back. It was all he had to give her: the freedom to leave, and to maybe never come back to him. All he could do was to wait and see what happened.

Resolutely, he straightened himself, and headed for the bank of floos in the lobby. Went to call Arthur Weasley to come and collect his daughter.


	2. Holly in Her Hair

_**A/N:** Draco and Ginny share a moment under the mistletoe. An outtake from chapter 14 of "Ginny Weasley and the Curse of the Firstborn." If you haven't read that first, you probably won't understand this._

**Holly in Her Hair**

Draco ran a hand down the front of his dress robes, and surveyed himself critically in the mirror. They were Natty Toggs' finest: heavy wool, and moss-green; it was David and Fiona's Christmas party, and he certainly wasn't about to go into public wearing red. He didn't even _own_ anything red. His hair, tied back in a sleek tail that fell just below his shoulders, was immaculate, but then it was rarely anything else. He gave his reflection one last nod of approval, then closed the door behind him, and went downstairs to the library to wait for Ginny.

She wasn't there yet. He glanced impatiently at the mantle clock. They should have left five minutes ago. Why did it take women so bleeding long to fix their hair, or whatever it was they spent all those hours doing in front of their mirrors? Normally, Draco didn't mind arriving a few minutes late to a party, but tonight, the idea of it irked him. Ginny should not keep him waiting; it was really very selfish of her. Going to this thing had been her idea, after all. He picked up the iron poker, and began to stir peevishly at the fire. Behind him, he heard the door latch click.

He turned, and felt his mouth fall open.

She was dressed in something white, her hair swept high onto her head, with little, wayward curls escaping to tease her face. The fire poker slipped from his hand, onto the hearthrug. Ginny looked startled at that, and Draco tried to say something flippant, to joke away his clumsiness, but he couldn't find any words. She was just… He had never seen her look so elegant.

He ought to do something other than stand there, gawping like a fish, but his usual sangfroid had deserted him, and he couldn't think of _what_ he should do next. The robe clung to her shape, outlining breasts and waist and hips, and when she stepped forward, he caught a long glimpse of curved leg through the slit in the skirt.

He felt his skin heat up, and was fairly sure it had nothing to do with the fireplace behind him.

"Sorry I'm late," she was saying. Late? Dimly, Draco wondered why this mattered. Something in her hair shone green and glossy in the firelight. Holly leaves. She had holly in her hair.

"You look nice." He heard himself say it, and regretted the words for being a lie: they should have been so much more.

She glanced away from him, self-conscious. "Thanks. So do you."

"Ready, then?"

"Ready."

The Port seemed unusually small tonight. Looking down at Ginny from his greater height, Draco could see that the shoulders of her robe instead of being sewn together in a seam, were tied with laces. It was a medieval sort of look. It made him think of old feudal castles and warriors camped by fires on frost-rimed hillsides, and chivalrous knights tumbling passionate maidens in haymows… Chastity and sensuality together. Somehow, the little, freckled diamonds of skin that showed through were more suggestive on Ginny than an entirely strapless dress would have been on another woman. He swallowed hard and then, because he couldn't stop himself and didn't want to, in any case, reached up and brushed his thumb lightly over the laces on one of her shoulders.

She glanced at him, puzzled.

"Stray hair," he said gruffly, and dropped his wayward hand.

He reached for her hand then, knowing that she wouldn't pull away. When they were visiting friends, he was allowed to do this.

She laced her fingers through his, giving him a half-apologetic smile. 'I'm sorry you have to go through this every time.'

He closed his eyes and breathed her in. He lived for this: to stand this close, to touch her and smell her, and have her eyes on his face like this, and to be allowed to look back, long and deep and unashamedly. In front of friends, they could be intimate in a way they were not allowed to be when they were alone.

Too soon, they were stepping out of the Gordons' Port.

The foyer was full of people, and Draco put a hand on Ginny's back. She was warm against his palm, and her hair just brushed his chin. He did not want to share her tonight; he wanted her alone, to himself. But it was not possible, of course. Alone with each other, there was nothing for them; no, better to be here, and to have more of her, in a way. He saw Betsy Kincaid waving madly from the far wall and, resigned, he steered Ginny in that direction.

Betsy commandeered her at once, and the two of them were off, Betsy pulling Ginny into her circle, and making introductions. Draco stepped back. Much as he wanted to keep Ginny firmly by his side every minute of tonight – preferably with his arm around her shoulders – he wasn't willing to stand among a throng of gossiping, empty-headed women to do it. And now Ginny was smiling, and chattering happily with someone she'd just met; she seemed to have forgotten all about him. Draco turned, and went to find where the men were congregating.

It was late, and the party was in full swing, but Draco was not enjoying himself. It had been hours since he had got more than a glimpse of Ginny, and he was beginning to resent it. He didn't want to be here, in the crush of people, and the heat and the unbearable din. But he didn't know where Ginny was, and in any case, she was probably having the time of her life without him, and would want to stay on for half the night.

As it was, she found him first. He was in the ballroom, talking with David Gordon, when she came and pulled on his arm. He glanced down at her flushed face and over bright eyes, and frowned. Something was not right. Was she ill?

"Get me out of here," she hissed at him.

He turned to Gordon and made their excuses, then took Ginny's hand and pulled her from the ballroom. There was a house-elf's entrance by the kitchen, and Draco led her to it, and they burst out into the cold, London night.

She leaned against the outside wall of the house, and closed her eyes, and he watched her with some concern. She was not ill, he realised after a bit: just overheated and as tired of the noise and the crowd as he was himself. He liked knowing that she felt the same way he did.

"Not having the great time you expected?" he said.

She opened her eyes. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I usually do fine in crowds. I think it was the heat that got to me."

"Want to walk?"

"All right." They started down the drive. She shivered.

"Cold?"

She was. He stopped, and swept his wand over her.

"Oh, that's much better," she said. "Thanks."

She looked uncommonly pretty with the flush in her cheeks playing up her bright eyes. He reached up and touched one of the glossy holly leaves in her hair. She smiled at him, and his heart missed a beat. How was it possible that she was standing here, so beautiful, and smiling at him like that, and still so out of his reach? It was not fair.

They walked, and made banal conversation that he was hardly aware of. He was getting cold, but he did not want to do a Warming Charm on himself: it was too much like admitting weakness. And he most certainly didn't want to go back to the party. He wanted to stay here and walk with Ginny all night: to have her all to himself like this, and maybe, after awhile, to have the courage to pick up her hand and pull her close to his side, even though no one else in the world was watching them.

They rounded a corner, and a brightly-lit shop window caught his eye. There was a toy-sized village surrounding a little Christmas tree, with a train running round the whole thing. It was the kind of thing Ginny would love. It was the kind of thing he had never taken notice of in his life, until she had come along and changed the world for him.

"Look," he said.

Her face lit up, as he had known it would, and she went to the window, bending a little, to inspect the train more closely.

He didn't know why he looked up just then, but he did.

Mistletoe. The unexpectedness of it startled him. He had managed to avoid the temptation of it these last weeks, had banned it from the house even, so that there would not be the constant reminder that he wanted to kiss her, and couldn't. But… here it was now. And although no one was _obligated_ to kiss under the mistletoe, it was right over their heads, and it seemed too good an invitation to pass up. Ginny straightened, and turned to say something to him, and he made up his mind. He put his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs caressing the laces, and pulled her to him.

He had meant for it to be a quick kiss, light and gentle, and then over with. He brushed his lips over hers, shuddering at their softness. For a moment, she didn't move, and he realised he had startled her. It had been a mistake. Oh Circe, what had he been thinking? He pulled…

But then he felt it: she moved her mouth under his. Hesitantly, but she moved it all the same. Kissing him back.

She made a little noise in her throat, and something electric coursed through him.

He put his hands on her face, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs, pulling her deeper into the kiss, unable to hold himself back. It was too fast for tonight, he knew that. But she hesitated again, then returned the kiss the same way, her teeth grazing his lip, her breath warm in his mouth. His mind seemed to implode, the world around him whirling around, sucking down into a vortex of raw, heady pleasure.

He had to get closer, further into her. He pushed her up against the shop wall, pinning her there with his body, and pulled at the clips in her hair, wanting to feel it fall around his hands, needing to bury them in it…

He never knew what brought him back to his senses, but some instinct deeply imbedded in his brain commanded him to stop. It was an instinct he had learned to obey, and he obeyed it now. He dropped his hands and stepped back from Ginny, fighting to control his breathing. Fighting to look cool and composed, and unaffected.

He nodded his head at the kissing ball. "Mistletoe," he said, and by some miracle his voice did not sound drugged and gravely, but careless and light. "It gets me every year: I never could resist a pretty girl under the mistletoe. Don't take it personally."

He wished she would stop looking at him like that: all shocked and horrified, as though he had _violated_ her, or something. Though, in a way, he knew he had. He was an idiot: an absolute fool. He had just ruined any chance he might have had at making amends with Ginny. She would hate him now – already was on the way to hating him, if the expression on her face was anything to go by. What had he been playing at?

Dully, Draco turned, and they walked toward the Apparition Port on the corner. The conversation between them limped along, and he was grateful when they stepped out of the port at Four Winds.

"Happy Christmas, Draco," Ginny told him quietly.

"Happy Christmas," he echoed. "Hadn't you better go to bed? You're looking pale, just now." And indeed, Ginny looked as though one good breath might knock her over.

He watched her go up the staircase and then went to the library to pour himself a stiff drink. Mistletoe and kisses. What damned idiot had been responsible for inventing that particular tradition? Draco sipped gloomily at his brandy, and stared into the cold ashes of the unlit fireplace. He had ruined everything. Everything.

But it had been one hell of a kiss. And for one, brief, shining moment she had kissed him back. Suddenly, he smiled. He didn't know what it meant, or what Ginny was thinking right now, if it would ever happen again, but there was no denying that she had kissed him back. _She had kissed him back_. And tomorrow was a new day, and their year wasn't over yet, and there was such a thing as fighting for the thing you wanted. He was a fighter: he could do that, couldn't he? It wasn't as though he had anything to lose.

He set his unfinished glass of brandy on the mantelpiece, and went to bed, his heart lighter than it had been all evening.


End file.
